Ode to the Twin Paradox

Lyrics

We started at the same time.
Same second, same hospital room, same cry.
Our clocks were wound together.
I thought they'd tick in step forever.

You remember the plan.
One of us had to go.
You packed my bags with the promises you’d keep.
I left you standing on the spinning ground.
Some clerk in Bern, 1905, smelled the ink on the paper that sent me away.
He didn't know he was building a wall between us.
A wall made of seconds.

And when I came back, the clock on my wrist read one year.
The clock on your face read two hundred.
You ask me who moved.
You ask me who's older.
From my window, you were the one shrinking, flying away from me.
From your window, I was the star that fell.
Special relativity. It's not so special. It's just lonely.

I watched the nebulae blur into lines.
The Great Bear, a watercolor smear.
My heart beat a steady rhythm.
Breakfast, lunch, dinner.
The ship's log says one year.
Langevin's traveler, 1911.
He never said what it felt like to come home.
To a ghost.
To a photograph that breathes.

When I came back, the clock on my wrist read one year.
The clock on your face read two hundred.
You ask me who moved.
You ask me who's older.
From my window, you were the one shrinking, flying away from me.
From your window, I was the star that fell.
Special relativity. It's not so special. It's just lonely.

The difference was the turn.
You kept spinning with the Earth, a constant, steady ride.
I hit the brakes. I felt the g-force.
I turned the ship around.
That's the part that broke the mirror.
That's the part that stole your time.
My path was a scar in spacetime. Yours was a perfect circle.

So here I am.
Younger than your children's children.
Holding a memory of a face that doesn't exist anymore.
You are my twin.
You are my future.
And I am your past, still breathing.
You can't step in the same river twice.
We can't even share the same now.